Rating: FULL DAMN MARKS!!!
Col. Kurtz: I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream; that's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor...and surviving.
Let me put the facts straight. This is not a review, simply because, movies of this grandeur and substance just can’t be reviewed; it can only be experienced. So, what follows, is my experience while the movie drowned me in its brilliance.
Firstly, let’s dangle some carrots in front of all our readers to realize what this movie was built on.
• The opening scene with Martin Sheen was unscripted. Sheen was actually drunk in the scene and punched the mirror which was real glass. Sheen also began sobbing and tried to attack Francis Ford Coppola. The crew was so disturbed by his actions that they wanted to stop shooting, but Coppola wanted to keep the cameras going.
• Marlon Brando enraged Francis Ford Coppola so much that the director turned over the filming of Brando's scenes to Jerry Ziesmer, the assistant director.
• Martin Sheen had a heart attack during the filming.
• The water buffalo (carabao in Filipino) that was slaughtered was real.
• After days of arguments over single lines of dialogue, an ad-lib style script was agreed upon for Brando, and this was shot according to his stipulations that he appears in shadows.
• Francis Ford Coppola threatened suicide several times during the making of the film.
• The total length of film printed for the movie was approximately 1,250,000 feet. That number roughly translates to a total of around 230 hours worth of footage.
The movie opens with probably the most beautiful war scene I’ve ever scene. A calm, tranquil treeline on the horizon, suddenly being lit up, and several balls of fire consumes the foliage. This scene is complemented in its beauty and maddening still-violence by an equally violent soundtrack “This is the end…” by “The Doors”. Right then, you know that you’re in for a cinematic experience of a lifetime.
One of the leads of this odyssey is Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen). The war in Vietnam has driven him into the mouth of paranoia, disarray and sporadic madness. The shabby, and reeking hotel he’s been put up at, only adds to his void. He’s desperate to step on the battleground and do whatever his country needs him to. His wishes are heard, and he’s tasked with a clandestine operation. The operation involves killing one of the most decorated, and probably the best officer the army ever had; Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando, our second lead). They want him dead because he’s crossed the lines of sanity. He’s gone rogue and governs a group of Cambodians deep into its jungle. For those locals, he is God, and they run his every errand, however absurd it may sound. Willard is assigned a unit who’ll help him make the excruciatingly long river journey, deep into the unmanned and dreaded territories of Vietnam, and eventually crossing over into Cambodia.
Along this exhausting journey, the unit makes a couple of stopovers. The first one is the best of all; courtesy Robert Duvall. He plays the surf-fanatic, carefree, gutsy, mean yet benevolent, eccentric character of Col. Kilgore. His introductory quote was just a treat and a testament to the surreal menace the movie’s wrapped around. As soon as he gets off the chopper, he says, “Lieutenant, bomb that tree line about 100 yards back! Give me some room to breathe”. Duvall wears, breathes, and spews all the traits of this character with extreme panache. Violence, mayhem, and the untapped reservoir of brutality is scattered throughout the unit’s journey. There are some light moments, but even they’re ferried along on the shoulders of impending doom and horror. There are some meandering moments, too. However, if you are deeply immersed into the film, and are as hooked as I was, you’ll see these moments as a part of the characters’ spiraling progression, during the twilight of their outlook, psyche and their existence in that war-ravaged nation.
The last hour or so is probably THE BEST part of the movie. The unit finally reaches their destination, albeit half in number since their departure. Oh, the picturesque production design of Col. Kurtz’s lair! It's a sight to sore eyes. All that splendor and panoramic view amidst the revulsion of war can only be pulled off by a master storyteller. The bleeding green color of coconut and palm trees; the earthy patches stained by severed heads; half-naked mutilated bodies hanging by the boughs, while some of them pinned against the trees with a spear; the colorful flare smoke emanating in the background; all of it coalesces to put up the big picture of beauty in chaos. And then enters the second lead, the pivot of this whole movie, Mr. Brando. Even though he’s appearance is physically felt in the last 40-odd minutes, we could still feel him breathing down every frame of the movie until that point. It’s like every incident that preceded his physical introduction, was only a stepping stone laid down by him. He was the invisible puppeteer, pulling all the strings, without the characters actually knowing it. He’d made his way into the psyche of Capt. Willard to such an extent, that Willard couldn’t see anything beyond this enigmatic presence of Col. Kurtz.
It’s as if the director was waiting until this moment, to let lose all the genius touches he’d stacked up in his repertoire. He made sure that every twitch in Brando’s expression, the tête-à-tête between light and shadow, and every baritone edge of his voice is felt by the viewers. It’s like movie went hypersensitive when Brando’s character was around. And when he delivered his lines, it was like you were transported to the hellish paradise he’s been living in. The coup-de-grace of the movie was violent as hell, yet very poetic.
Technically, the movie was a spellbinding exercise. The slithering, and sometimes panoramic cinematography, gnawing at the core elements of every frame; the sudden outburst and sometimes an escalation of background score provided the illusion of being part of a calculated nightmare; and the master himself was at the top of the pyramid, overlooking, marshaling his cadres and sculpting a movie of a lifetime. Every frame of the movie carried his strokes of class, and boundless enterprise. In summary, movie was a surreal and an epic masterpiece scripted in hell.
Col Kurtz: The horror...The horror.
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